The Liber
Linteus Zagrabiensis (Latin for "Linen Book of Zagreb",
also rarely known as Liber Agramensis, is the longest Etruscan text
and the only extant linen book, dated to the 3rd century BC. It remains
mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan
language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text
is most likely a ritual calendar.
The fabric
of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy wrappings in Ptolemaic
Egypt. The mummy was bought in Alexandria in 1848 and since 1867 both the mummy
and the manuscript have been kept in Zagreb, now in a refrigerated
room at the Archaeological Museum.
History of discovery
In 1848,
Mihajlo Barić (1791–1859), a low ranking Croatian official in the Hungarian Royal
Chancellery, resigned his post and embarked upon a tour of several countries,
including Egypt. While in Alexandria, he purchased a sarcophagus containing
a female mummy, as a souvenir of his travels. Barić displayed the mummy at his
home in Vienna, standing it upright in the corner of his sitting room. At
some point he removed the linen wrappings and put them on display in a separate
glass case, though it seems he had never noticed the inscriptions or their
importance.
The mummy
remained on display at his home until his death in 1859, when it passed into
possession of his brother Ilija, a priest in Slavonia. As he took no
interest in the mummy, he donated it in 1867 to the State Institute of Croatia,
Slavonia, and Dalmatia in zagreb .
In 1891,
the wrappings were transported to Vienna, where they were thoroughly examined
by Jacob Krall, an expert on the Coptic language, who expected the
writing to be either Coptic, Libyan or Carian. Krall was the
first to identify the language as Etruscan and reassemble the strips. It was
his work that established that the linen wrappings constituted a manuscript
written in Etruscan.
At first, the provenance and identity of the mummy were
unknown, due to the irregular nature of its excavation and sale. This led to speculation that the
mummy may have had some connection to either the Liber Linteus or the
Etruscans. But a papyrus buried with her proves that she was Egyptian and gives
her identity as Nesi-hensu, the wife of Paher-hensu, a tailor from Thebes.
Date and
origin
On
paleographic grounds, the manuscript is dated to approximately 250 BC. Certain
local gods mentioned within the text allow the Liber Linteus's place of
production to be narrowed to a small area in the southeast of Tuscany near Lake
Trasimeno, where four major Etruscan cities were located: modern day Arezzo, Perugia, Chiusi and cCortona.
Structure
The book is laid out in twelve columns from right to left,
each one representing a "page". Much of the first three columns are
missing, and it is not known where the book begins. Closer to the end of the
book the text is almost complete (there is a strip missing that runs the entire
length of the book). By the
end of the last page the cloth is blank and the selvage is intact, showing
the definite end of the book.
There are 230 lines of text, with 1200 legible words. Black ink has been used for the main
text, and red ink for lines and diacritics.
In use it
would have been folded so that one page sat atop another like a codex,
rather than being wound along like a scroll. Julius Caesar is said to have
folded scrolls in similar accordion fashion while on campaigns.
Content
Though the Etruscan language is not fully understood,
certain words can be picked out of the text to give us an indication of the
subject matter. Both dates and the names of gods are found throughout the text,
giving the impression that the book is a religious calendar. Such calendars are known from the Roman world,
giving not only the dates of ceremonies and processions, but also the rituals
and liturgies involved, the lost Etrusca disciplina referred to by
several Roman antiquarians.
The theory that this is a religious text is strengthened by
recurring words and phrases that are surmised to have liturgical or dedicatory
meanings. Some notable
formulae on the Liber Linteus include a hymn-like repetition of ceia hia in
column 7, and variations on the phrase śacnicstreś
cilθś
śpureśtreśc
enaś
, which is translated by van der Meer
as
"by
the
sacred
fraternity/priesthood
of
cilθ,
and
by
the
civitas
of
enaś".
